88Semitic in character. It is not the desire of Knowledge which dominates the ideal of the Sufis of this school, but the characteristic features of their life are piety, unworldliness, and an intense longing for God due to the consciousness of sin. Their object is not to philosophise, but principally to work out a certain ideal of life. From our standpoint, therefore, they are not of much importance.
In the beginning of the 9th Century Ma'ruf Karkhi defined Sufiism as " Apprehension of Divine realities(1)" - a definition which marks the movement from Faith to Knowledge. But the method of apprehending the ultimate reality was formally stated by Al-Qushairi about the end of the 10th Century. The teachers of this school adopted the Neo-Platonic idea of creation by intermediary agencies; and though this idea lingered in the minds of Sufi writers for a long time, yet their Pantheism led them to abandon the Emanation theory altogether. Like Avicenna they looked upon the Ultimate Reality as "Eternal Beauty ", whose very nature consists in seeing its own "face" reflected in the Universe-mirror. The Universe, therefore, became to them a reflected image of the "Eternal Beauty", and not an emanation as the Neo-Platonists had taught. The cause of creation , says Mir Sayyid Sharif, is the manifestation of Beauty,
1 Mr. Nicholson has collected the various definitions of Sufiism. See J. R. A. S. April, 1906.